Advantages And Disadvantages Of Secret Key Encryption

• A big disadvantage of symmetric key algorithms is the requirement of a shared secret key, with one copy at each end.
  • Since keys are subject to potential discovery by a cryptographic adversary, they need to be changed often and kept secure during distribution and in service.
  • Choosing, distributing, and storing keys without error and without loss is difficult to reliably achieve.

• Symmetric key algorithms are computationally less intensive than asymmetric key algorithms.
  • In practice, this means that a quality asymmetric key algorithm is much slower than a quality symmetric key algorithm.

What are the categories of symmetric key encyption?

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© 2006 John Michael Pierobon

Notes